Women in News and Current Affairs Broadcasting (Communications Committee Report)

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, this report has the title Women in News and Current Affairs Broadcasting. It is a very straightforward title, but it understates the importance of the report. Of course, it is about making sure that there are opportunities for women in broadcasting and no barriers. But it is also about the extraordinary impact of television: how it can shape perceptions, change attitudes and provide role models. Role models can be tremendously important to inspire young people and raise their ambitions.

I remember when I was at school, which is now many years ago, parents of friends of mine being astonished when one girl said that she wanted to be a barrister and another that she wanted to be an engineer. After university, when I came to London, I remember a friend who started work on “Panorama”. She said that whenever she phoned up an MP or any organisation, they automatically assumed that she was the secretary calling on behalf of a man.

Today, we live in a very different world. There are role models for women in every sector of society, and in broadcasting there are many female newsreaders, political editors and reporters on radio and television, but why not more? Why are there still so many more older men on our screens than older women?

So I believe this report is of great importance. We were fortunate to have as chairman the noble Lord, Lord Best, who steered the committee with skill and focus, and to have on the committee several members with first-hand knowledge of the broadcasting world. Half of our committee members were women. We also had two excellent special advisers.

The report is detailed, so I want to single out just a few of the points which struck me as we looked at the available evidence—evidence, as has been said already, which was not as clear as we would have liked. The broadcasters need to collect and publish better and clearer data.

What did we discover from the evidence before us? First, there are far fewer women reporters in flagship news than male reporters, and women are given many more of the softer news stories to cover. I was also struck by the fact that, of the experts and commentators interviewed on television and radio, only about one in four were women. To take just two examples of high-profile BBC programmes, men dominated BBC’s “Question Time” and dominated even more the “Today” programme on Radio 4—I am talking about experts as well as broadcasters. I have to say that Britain is not alone in this, and a study into 10 countries across the world showed that men also clearly outnumbered women on television news stories there.

But why is this the case in the UK? There are legal obligations on broadcasters, and the public service broadcasters all have diversity policies, so we began to look at what the barriers to women might be in practice. After all, the majority of journalism students are women. Why do they not get into broadcasting? Is there a bias in recruitment? On this, there were differences of opinion among our witnesses, but it is clear that we need greater transparency so that people can see and be reassured that there is fair and open competition.

As has been said by other noble Lords, what emerged clearly was the difficulty faced by women in having to be available 24/7 or working nights, because of their need to look after young children. Some witnesses were very vociferous about this problem. Others from ITN, Sky News and Channel 4 News were more encouraging, and the BBC told us that it had made changes to help women combine their work and domestic responsibilities.

The next question, which has also been raised today, was: why do there seem to be so many more older men in broadcasting than older women? Have they been pushed aside? Is there a deep-seated cultural bias against them, an informal culture of discrimination? We were really worried about the way that the BBC had in the past included in its settlement agreements so-called gagging clauses.

We in the committee did not get at why that culture exists in the broadcasters. The witnesses were insufficiently forthcoming as to why there are fewer older women. As has been mentioned, we have John Humphrys and David Dimbleby in news and broadcasting and elsewhere we have Maggie Smith and Mary Berry, but why do we not have people of that vintage in current affairs?

There have been improvements and, as has been said, information on certain changes has been sent to all committee members by the broadcasters on what they have been doing since our report was published. We have been told about new appointments—so-called key diversity appointments, internal diversity targets, leadership diversity objectives, diversity guidelines and so on. They are all fine-sounding and no doubt genuine and well intentioned. I do not want to see quotas, and I certainly do not want to see direct intervention by government. I am comfortable with targets and nudging.

Targets and guidelines are fine, but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, and I hope very much that our committee will at some future date look again at what progress has been made not just in setting objectives but in actually achieving them.